The Ultimate Fighter: Carla Esparza leads the way into historic UFC reality show

Carla Esparza from Redondo Beach, CA is one of the cast of fighters on the UFC press tour for Season 20 of The Ultimate Fighter, which will feature all 115-pound female fighters. Los Angeles, CA. 9/4/2014(Photo by John McCoy Daily News

THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER SEASON 20

What: The 20th season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” featuring for the first time an entirely female cast competing for the opportunity to be crowned the UFC’s inaugural women’s strawweight champion.

When: Season premiere is 10 p.m. Wednesday.

TV: Fox Sports 1

It all started with an innocent comment to Carla Esparza.

“Oh, you’re really strong for your size,” the 5-foot-1 Esparza said, recalling a conversation in the weight room at Redondo High School. “You might be good at wrestling.”

Bye-bye, basketball. Welcome to wrestling with the boys.

Esparza has parlayed that first foray on the mat into a career in the cage.

And now she joins 15 other women in making MMA history, starring in the first all-female season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” with the winner becoming the promotion’s first strawweight champion.

“I find it so crazy because imagine if that person never said that to me. I wouldn’t be here today,” Esparza, 26, said Wednesday as she joined six her fellow TUF competitors to promote the show Wednesday at the JW Marriott at L.A. Live.

The 20th season of “The Ultimate Fighter” premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. on Fox Sports 1.

In two years at Redondo, Esparza more than held her own against boys and excelled versus girls, placing 10th and third nationally. That led to four years of wrestling at Menlo College, where she was a two-time All-American.

That led to sampling jiu-jitsu, boxing and Muay Thai before she found her way to Team Oyama in Irvine and a life as a mixed martial artist.

“Obviously, wrestling was my first love as far as combat sports go. I love that grind, that pushing as hard as you can,” Esparza said. “You’re in there with one other person and it’s only you and them. And it’s like, who wants it more?

“I love that feeling and MMA’s kind of the same thing. Plus the punching and stuff, which makes it pretty hard, but I think it makes for a lot of adrenaline and aggressiveness. It’s fun.”

Also fun is winning, to which Esparza is well accustomed. In four years as a pro, she is 9-2 and was the Invicta FC champion when the UFC signed most of 115-pounders in order to create its own division.

Esparza was no longer the champion when she walked into the TUF house in June.

Instead, she was a target.

“It kind of all became real and I felt that pressure of like ‘OK, everyone’s expecting you to be No. 1 here,’ and I was like, ‘Oh crap,’” she said. “I had like anxiety and I didn’t want to let my fans down and didn’t want to let my coaches down”

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After six weeks of filming in Las Vegas, the women have been done for about two weeks. All that’s left is the secret finale, which will take place in December and crown a new champion.

But there is some tension over how the fighters might be portrayed. After all, you have 16 fighters split into two teams, cooped up in one house with two training sessions a day. And in 19 previous seasons that have been all men — except for Season 18, which was men and women ­­— the in-fighting, frustrations and tears have been on display.

Only this time, it’s all women.

“I’m really interested to see how they pieced it together. And I really hope they’re not just all about the drama,” said Huntington Beach’s Jessica Penne (11-2), who was Invicta’s 105-pound champion before moving up in weight for the show. “I hope they’re about the good moments. There were a lot of really fun moments and there was a lot of the girls coming together and bonding.

“And I think that’s so important, to show that we’re not just really competitive people, but we also can find common ground and share with each other and grow with each other.”

While it isn’t easy to edit six weeks into a series of one-hour episodes, it does not diminish the intensity or difficulty several faced in getting through the show.

“It’s just these kind of things are pressure cookers. It really is a grind every single day,” said Penne, 31. “And I was just trying, day by day, ‘OK, this day I’m gonna get through it. I can’t even look two days down the line because I’m just trying to get through this day the best that I can.’”